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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867015">Diary of the Epidemic</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon'>TheDarkFlygon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Caduceus | Trauma Center Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Attempt at Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Random &amp; Short, Sickfic, Sleep Deprivation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:28:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22867015</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The plague ravages through the corridors of Caduceus. This is one of its sole survivors' account.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caduceus USA &amp; Derek Stiles</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Diary of the Epidemic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was supposed to be my BTHB entry for... "Insomnia". I really liked it back then, but discarded it for that purpose once I got a request to fill it with Pokémon SWSH's Bede. I instead retooled into a weird, subpar sickfic.<br/>I'm just glad to have this one done and over with because it's been rotting in my laptop for a little while for very little reason. I'm somewhat proud of the wittier bits of dialogue I've slipped in there, thus why I forced myself to somewhat finish it. Nothing more, nothing less.<br/>At least, it's one more TC fic to quench the decade-old thirst of what's left of its fandom lmao. Not sure if anyone ever asked for it, though.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was starting to get a little <em>too </em>much on his nerves, to be honest.</p><p>As always, it started with small things: colleagues giving each other the flu during the winter, patients having harder ailments to treat due to the general colder weather, Victor’s killjoy mood worsening while the days kept getting shorter… Really, at first, it was just the cold season being the cold season and all of its little flaws impacting everyone’s daily lives.</p><p>If he’d have known how bad things would get from then on, he wouldn’t have been so confident about being able to sail through the storm peacefully.</p><p> </p><p>The colder the temperatures got, the sicker Caduceus became. In an ironic twist of events, he remained healthy enough to watch everyone else succumb to the epidemic while he stayed afloat, able to operate, while Tyler had lost his voice, Leslie had crippling headaches, Stephen was stuck with his wife’s influenza… Eventually, he found himself alone in the facility with Angie and Sidney (to say that was awkward would be an understatement), shortly joined by a new nurse than had just come back from her own case of whatever respiratory infection she had been infected with (frankly, he didn’t quite remember anymore).</p><p>Main consequence: less people, more responsibilities to take care of for the few ones still left to work. The shifts kept getting longer with very little hope for a comeback to normalcy anytime soon. Simply put, the illnesses and the injuries kept gracing them in the worst ways possible and he didn’t know if he was growing tired or sick of it all. Perhaps both. Not that he was the only one affected by the general spoiled mood of Caduceus’ misery-infested corridors.</p><p> </p><p>Just like the little things piling up to ruin the entire mood of the staff and their working conditions with it, his own symptoms started small. It was yawning at the most inappropriate times, blinking rapidly, wanting to lie down at the very first occasion presenting itself to him, snapping at Angie for the dumbest reasons. Nothing other than side effects of tiredness, then fatigue, and it’d be fixed by sleeping a bit more on the nights (or days) he’d get free of work. Too bad these started to go extinct after a while too…</p><p>He started to get worried after some time, though. He’d start hearing voices when there were none, he’d forget about the most basic things (that included taking care of a tumour, to which Angie (justifiably) sighed and rolled her eyes), he’d fall asleep only to wake up minutes later barely registering he had dozed off in the first place. If that mess was to last longer than that, he’d find himself being unable to properly take care of a patient altogether.</p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Jesus, man, what in the ever-loving fuck happened to you?!” was the first thing Tyler asked him when he finally came back and reprised his duty.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Your <strong>flu</strong>, that’s what happened,” was the only thing Derek could muster out of his mouth without letting a flow of profanities dirty the walls.</em>
</p><hr/><p> </p><p>With exhaustion came the constant weakening of one’s physical condition. It just happened with the course of life: the less sleep you’d get, the less energy you’d recover, the less the body would get to work with to fight off against the different pathogens waiting to enter your system and cause havoc. He couldn’t afford a sick day, not when so many people still were on one, so he’d have to pull through it anyway.</p><p>What he meant by that was that temperatures had lost all of their meaning to him.</p><p> </p><p>The situation became somehow even worse when Angie was the next one to go down to the flu epidemic. Caduceus was now composed of two surgeons, a nurse, a researcher and their director. Leslie was still plagued with cutting her convalescence short, Victor was isolating himself even further to avoid being questioned on his tissue consummation and, well… Derek was growing very much tired of thinking of how very much tired he was. Still, the loss of Angie forced them to assist each other even further, so he could complain even less.</p><p>Because, as it stood, Derek was the only one who wasn’t convalescent. Both Tyler and Leslie were paler than usual, not even bothering to hide the tiredness in their eyes and the dark rings under them. Victor eventually collapsed in his office and had to be dragged home by Tyler. Leslie then relapsed and had to stay down for a day. This was going absolutely <em>nowhere</em>.</p><hr/><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Huh…? Director?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Derek shook his hand in front of Sidney’s face. It was rude to call him in the director’s office if it was just to watch him take a nap or doze off. Seriously, they were already as busy as they could be, why waste even more time on pointless interactions? Well, it sure seemed like it wasn’t his plan at all, at least, so he avoided getting too snappy at his director: his mentor’s stubborn brother suddenly snapped back into place, his glasses almost falling off from his crimson nose, while he tried starting at Derek with puffy reddened eyes that couldn’t quite focus on anything.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“R-right. I called you in because…”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A coughing fit escaped from the director’s throat, shutting him down for a few, long seconds. It sounded just as wet as a piece of gauze used for haemorrhages meeting the bin.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“…because?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Trying his best to still look presentable, Sidney cleared his throat, but only ended up coughing even more.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You know, Director, I’m fairly sure you’re allowed to take a sick day…”</em>
</p><hr/><p> </p><p>Ah, yes, Derek, very good idea. Excellent even. Now that <em>Sidney</em> was the newest entry on the absent staff’s billboard there were only Tyler, Mia (the nurse he had forgotten the name of until now) and him in this goddamn place. Fortunately, very few patients came in, but still, it didn’t make it any better. There was no distraction from his migraine aside from Tyler’s… <em>sense of humour</em> and the endless silence of the desert corridors.</p><p>A fun thing to notice now was that he sucked at speaking even more than usual. His procedures were rooted deep enough within him to rely on muscle memory, but holding conversations wasn’t, so he just happened to suck at speaking now. Angie would have certainly made a remark about that to him would have she been there, but she wasn’t, so, instead, his med school friend liked to remind him that his words just mushed together until it wasn’t funny anymore.</p><p>It was a shame Tyler stopped finding that funny because, personally, Derek was starting to find that absolutely hilarious. Everything was growing on him, these days: the sound of the coffee machine blurting out the last drops of a cup, coins falling out of people’s hands, some weirdly-placed tissues in the bin of the lounge room, the noise of soap coming out from the dispensers, crying…</p><p> </p><p>In fact, it may have been that meaningless laughter he’d catch every time something remotely amusing reached his way. It was annoying in a weird way, because when that happened he’d be almost useless, but at least he wouldn’t have to focus as much on how everything ached: his face was what started to bother him if he laughed for longer periods of time, which was starting to get frequent.</p><p>It’d have also helped if Tyler and a kind-of recovered Stephen (“My fever’s below one hundred, I should be fine”) didn’t stare at him as if he was going insane every single time he started giggling like a little boy in front of a funny cartoon. What, didn’t they hear the conveniently timed squeaky sound effects of the coffee machine and the contagious giggles from the patients’ rooms?</p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>“We have… no patient currently staying here, Derek,” Stephen replied when he eventually popped the question to his workmates.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Told you he was slowly becoming the next Joan of Ark. Next thing we know he’s gonna hear the voice of Asclepius telling him to kick Delphi outta ’merica…”</em>
</p><hr/><p> </p><p>And then came in, at long last, the sniffles, the cough and the chills. Getting up for his third shift in a row, he really felt like his body was about to stop responding and send him into a lethargic protest. His bed, despite its catastrophic state and pitiful appearance, had never been this comfortable before. It was like he could have melted into his mattress.</p><p>Now, the logical reaction would have been to call in sick because he was finally eligible for it; and yet, he got up from bed, took the bus and went to Caduceus anyway while everyone else on board was staring at him in contempt or concern, he didn’t really know. Seemed like his decision-making skills could be severely hindered by the heat inflicted on his brain. Fantastic, just <em>fantastic</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Good news: Leslie and Angie were both back, looking healthier than they had before their leave (which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly the hardest thing to do, especially when it came to Angie). Stephen’s family finally was freed from the terrible flu epidemic. Sidney had somehow accepted to keep the bed instead of working from home and get his bronchitis worse. He didn’t smell the stench of other people’s blood anymore. He didn’t have to worry about driving home anymore because he didn’t have to go home.</p><p>Now, all of that was somewhat counterbalanced by the blood pouring from his mouth when he coughed a little too hard. He must have cut his throat doing so the day before and hadn’t noticed it until now. That was kind of inconvenient.</p><p> </p><p>Walking had become even worse than a chore: it was impossible for him to walk in a straight line now. His vision just swam too badly for him to accomplish such a feat. And, even if his sight had been straighter than Sidney’s personal code of conduct, his constant dizziness would have overpowered what strength was left in his legs. There was just no way to win.</p><p>There had, in fact, never been a way for him to win in this hell of a situation, he realized when his eyes rolled back into their sockets as he was trying to inject an anti-inflammatory preparation into some benign intestinal inflammation, under the panicked cries of Angie and the blinding lights of the OR…</p><p>Not that it wasn’t a foreign experience to him anymore anyway.</p><p> </p><p>Oh, and did he forget to add that the floor of the OR was comfortable? It really was.</p><hr/><p>
  <em>“Hey, at least he had a good run… He was the last one of us still standing,” Tyler commented as he stared at the chest x-ray he held in his hands, barely managing to hide his concern by making it into a half-hearted joke. “Not gonna lie, that’s one impressive hell of a thing he’s got there.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Sidney’s gonna be furious when he’ll come back…” Leslie remarked. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I mean, it’s not our fault Derek’s caught that, right?” A silence followed as green eyes gave him a death stare. “Well, huh, not directly, at least. Not that it’s his either. That’s just how sicknesses are, y’know?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“…I’ll go prepare a room for him,” Angie said, breath itching in her throat. </em>
</p><hr/><p> </p><p>Hahaha. There it was: his sick leave! Finally, some time off work, at long last! Too bad it had to take him almost complete exhaustion, severe sleep deprivation, dehydration and a case of acute pneumonia to get to it; but at least, it was there, now, and he’d be free from operating for a little while. That was a relief he never thought he’d have wanted.</p><p>Probably because it <em>wasn’t</em> the relief he wanted. He couldn’t even breathe properly anymore. His brain was too similar to mush for him to enjoy anything or remember something for more than a couple minutes, fevered almost to death. All he could guess is that it had to be terrible, considering he was staying at Caduceus like the patient he had become and Angie standing or sitting besides his hospital bed, regularly changing a wet piece of cloth on his forehead whenever she was there (which was perhaps a bit too often for a simple visitor and too personal for a nurse taking care of an inpatient).</p><p> </p><p>Most of Caduceus would pay him a visit too, not just Angie. Tyler, Leslie, Robert, Stephen, Sidney… His hospital room would sometimes turn into a tea salon, which he should have probably minded for the sake of his own feverish head but enjoyed nonetheless: focusing on other people’s words made it so he wouldn’t focus so much on how everything hurt. Some of them were even very funny and not in the “I am severely sleep-deprived and my body temperature won’t lower” sense of the term. He sometimes found himself coughing his lungs out in amusement to them (prompting whoever was in the room to then fret over him).</p><p>It wasn’t just internal visitors too. Mom, his mentor, Dr Myers (“Dr <em>Kasal</em>, Derek,” Angie reminded him), Mary… He was surprised to see the latter, actually, considering she had moved out; but she tried convincing him with a smile and a giggle she was passing by Angeles Bay anyway. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to believe it was a mere coincidence. To be fair, trying to think when the insides of your skull were closer to a sauna than an actual bone for your brain to sit inside of was more difficult than it sounded.</p><p> </p><p>Well, it wasn’t like he needed to think or get upset at things anymore. He had all the excuses in the world to lie back, sleep throughout most of the days and get everything handed to him, in part because he couldn’t move on his own and wouldn’t be able to do so for a little while; but that was just nit-picking, wasn’t it?</p><p>At least, now, this misadventure was done and over with.</p>
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